I have an opportunity to build a new room. Room is a closet but I can modify and build it out to 4ft deep. I haven't measured but it's ~6ft long. Essentially I was thinking ~4x6 room. It will be extremely difficult to bring outside air into this room. I can pull in from the main room which has a reasonable amount of air moving around. Exhaust may also be an issue. I was hoping someone might be able to point me in the right direction to somehow use a recirc. air system. ie: Vent to main room pull air in from main room, keep main room temp controlled. Any ideas? Any builders maybe could help out with getting outside air in and venting. I can take pics if needed. Assume there are no holes (ducting etc...) anywhere near the room but it does have one outside wall that is not facing any public places.
I use a similar setup and it works fine. I pull air in from the main room at the floor and push it back out to the main room near the ceiling. Another option is to build a soffit to hold duct work. An improvement I have planned is to route the exhaust into my return HVAC ducting where it will be cooled by the AC or act as heat in the winter. I'm going to build out a soffit to accomplish this as the nearest return duct is about 5 ft. away from the garden. The intake air is always fine as the interior temperature of my place is always around 70.
Thanks for the response. Did you ever measure the ppm in the grow part of the room? I'm fairly sure that I can keep the temps at decent levels just concerned the quality of the air will stay constant over a 12 hr period.
Control the climate of the entire room with machines and have one reasonable sized fan in each corner, maybe even with a carbon filter or 2 for odor control as well
Did I measure PPM in my water or in the air? I've not noticed any problems with the air. I have small little fans inside would normally be this bedrooms main closet to circulate the air around the garden. One intake and one exhaust to move air between the closet and the main room. I use the closet to hold parent stock and clones in progress. Main development is done in the larger room. All my environmental controls are in the main room including temperature control and air filtering. Because of the rapid turnover in the closet, total cf once per minute, it will mirror the main room identically. So all I do is make sure the main room is good at that automatically carries over to the closet. The only reason I use the closet is to separate light cycles, 18/6 in the closet but 12/12 in the main room.
I use the main room as a room, my small office. Closet is just a flower room, veg room is elsewhere in the apartment. I'm just trying to make sure that pulling air in from the room where my computers (and myself) live a lot of the time is ok, especially as I'm also venting into that room. Maybe I need to bring in outside air for 5 mins every hour or something?
Most apartment buildings are thrown together pretty quickly. My guess is the overall air in your apartment is changing itself out fairly regularly due to the normal permeability of modern buildings. Short of contaminants in the air you just want to make sure there is enough O2/CO2 and the temperatures remain stable. Outside air won't hurt anything but make sure you filter it with a HEPA filter. If you don't you will, sooner or later, bring in more than just the air you want. Like bugs, spores, pollen, etc. In short, I don't think you need outside air. Your plants will definitely live. If you want to increase production you could get a CO2 meter and system, but they are expensive and have their own learning curve. If you change out that closet air every 5 minutes or less than your plants inside it will be breathing the exact same air they would breathe anywhere else inside your apartment. Most people are more concerned with temps than with quality. If you move enough air to keep the temps stable you'll have good quality air as a by-product.
Thanks for the help here. I'm of course concerned about the temps but I'm fairly confident that I have a good enough heater and a/c to handle the temp issue. I'm usually used to using outside air and having a permanent air flow, i.e. intake/extraction never go off. Only time will tell if you're right . Just got my Snow White and White Rhino from Nirvana. My babies are counting on you being right dude.
Well, so far so good for me. My closet is almost exactly 2' deep by 8' wide. The bedroom it attaches to is also 8' wide and 10.5' long, so it's pretty small. I bring fresh air into my bedroom, through the normal HVAC system. I installed duct fans on the registers to pull air into the room that way. So the total solution for me is to recirculate my closet into the bedroom but the bedroom recirulates with the rest of the unit. My setup is probably not ideal but I don't have many options. I'm one of 8 units in a building and I didn't want to modify my unit in a way that would make it tough to put back if I ever wanted to move out and convert it to a rental. So all my air input/output is done through the central HVAC system. I just added more duct work and fans behind the walls to get the volumes I need. The upside is I don't have any intakes or exhausts that could attract external attention. That and I could tear down the room and make it look like a completely normal bedroom and closet in one day. Albeit, one with more and larger registers than would be typical but people never notice details like that. If it makes you feel more comfortable I believe you can buy both O2 and CO2 meters. With them you'll know for sure the air is good but I haven't seen a single air problem yet. Just for a comparison I have anywhere from 4 to 8 plants in the closet and double that in the bedroom.
Awesome, thx man. I'm going easy route, see what happens. I really like the idea of no external noises that sound like fans sucking air at high velocity . Spent many a night wondering if people could hear it lol. If I can find a cheap enough co2 meter for the room I will but getting power into room and other building related stuff is costing more than I thought Thx again.
I hear you there, bro, it always does. I've spent quite a pile of coin converting that bedroom and closet. Looks great now but it was a lot of work and a lot of money. I'm of the opinion you can never be too careful though....